Comments on: Red-Tag 50% Sale on Homes, Going On Now!

By: jared

jared — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:52:33 +0000

What timing! Jim, I just finished an article on my site about MY experience buying a house, we go to contract Monday!…It’s my latest post if you care to read it.

-Cheers

By: Chewbakka

Chewbakka — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:41:21 +0000

I 2nd Donna Freedman’s comment. There is some real sense in this because we live in an active society where we are out most of the time anyway. Home bodies get fat at a higher rate…last I heard, isn’t this a nationwide problem?

By: Donna Freedman

Donna Freedman — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:20:05 +0000

Apparently no one builds small houses any more. Do three people really need 3,000 square feet?
Remember, once you’ve bought it you have to heat it, cool it, clean it, maintain it and pay taxes on it.
Just my $0.02.

By: saladdin

saladdin — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 23:02:57 +0000

People still don’t understand. If you paid 250k for a house that sold for 550k two years ago then your house is worth…250k. It doesn’t matter what it DID sell for. Who cares what your house sold for 2 years ago? In 5 years that house has appreciated only 3% these people will be the ones saying “WTF Where’s my 550k house?”

saladdin

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 20:47:15 +0000

Home prices in Norfolk, VA (very coastal area) are holding steady for homes in good neighborhoods. Homes in bad neighborhoods, homes that need work, and espeically condos are going for bargain prices. In the end, those who put time and effort into their house to make it nicer are still getting their money back. Those who did squat and expected home prices to rise and the value of their home to go up just because someone said it should, well they’re not doing as well and that’s to be expected.

By: HuBu

HuBu — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:06:49 +0000

We just closed on a house this Feb ’09 for $261k. It was sold for $400k in ’05. I am paying around $8k in property taxes a year (South Florida). House prices are still dropping down here, its so bad with the declining value that the government is proposing to raise property tax to make up for the decline in value.

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 09:37:07 +0000

Yup, my area dropped like a rock!

By: Hogan

Hogan — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:50:05 +0000

The housing crisis had many culprits. One thing I think needs to be discussed is how the irresponsible were protected by Washington, encouraged to buy a house, and the business class was protected, they were making an enourmous amount of money off the irresponsible. However, the middle class were not protected, we were not willing to take the risk to take an interest only loan for a house with an inflated price, so guess what we lost out on the house or had to pay a ton more money for a house that was not worth what it really was worth, because the irresponsible had nothing to lose, and the business class had everything to gain.

By: Chewbakka

Chewbakka — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:56:25 +0000

Chicagoland is not immune to price drops either. In my neighborhood, a 10-12% drop is what we’re seeing. Anyone else here seeing differently? My guess is that mid-west is not as dramatic as the coastal areas. Thoughts?

By: Thor

Thor — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:21:14 +0000

50% sale is all relative similar to a sale in retail. If an item on the shelf was originally sold for $100 it could include a massive markup from say a cost to produce of $10, so a 50% off sale to $50 sounds great but there is still the potential for prices to come down further.

The housing market has some similar aspects in that the prices were marked up a few years ago and the 50% decrease could still contain lots of markup or profit.

That being said the appropriate price of a home is similar to goods as well, if you are happy to pay a price and think the home or good is worth it. That is what that item is worth.

A finance professor told me once, it is not how much it costs you to build that determines price but how much someone will pay for it that determines price.

By: DebtGoal

DebtGoal — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:11:11 +0000

This is such great news for someone with financial prudence. But I feel that having a lot of savings and living frugally still is not enough to make getting a 50% housing steal worth the while.

Even if someone has these two criteria met, can’t taking on a hefty mortgage still be a bad move if they have a lot of income insecurity (job risk) or even low commitment to staying in their metro area over the long-term?

By: Jessica

Jessica — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:02:38 +0000

I live just west of downtown Fort Worth, TX in a neighborhood full of craftsman and tudor homes built around 1920-1930. The three rules in real-estate never fail… Location, Location, Location. Prices have at the very least leveled out and are more realistically, slightly going up. The only thing that seems to have changed is the average length for homes to sell. Since there’s so much land in Texas, there wasn’t a bubble in real estate although there was a big surge of new home construction in urban sprawl areas but that’s generally not a good investment anyways and most of those homes are shoddily constructed.

I think it’s time to start investing in rental properties…

By: VicfromATL

VicfromATL — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:34:09 +0000

I live in one of the nice Atlanta suburbs and there’s hardly any decline.

Of course, homes take longer to sell etc. but no panic.

By: Yana

Yana — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:14:38 +0000

I think that is fantastic. We would like to do the same thing, but pay outright for a home. The prices aren’t quite low enough and we don’t have enough money yet to do it. I hope those people who say that prices will go down even more are right.

Just as a side note about realtors: if you’re selling a house, it is much less expensive to use a lawyer than a realtor. That was one of my uncle’s tips, which he used many years ago when selling.

We’ve actually been watching a house, which has been on the market since August 2008. Whoever set the price must be out of his mind, because it is priced without taking into account the decline in value. It’s priced at $435,000. I’d say $260,000 is reasonable; however, we have only seen the outside of it. If we had the $260,000 for a house, I wouldn’t hesitate to make the offer. Remember, this is California where prices are obscene.

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:51:07 +0000

Most of the foreclosures are happening in those “hot” areas like California, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico, etc. Pittsburgh home prices haven’t been moving one way or another and houses in Maine are at 1970s prices it seems.